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Google mail undo and other G Suite usefull features

I’m working a lot with G Suite, I trying to keep up to date on what new features are added, I do miss some from time to time. While working I discovered a few features that probably slipped my mind. I like to share them with you and actually myself because they are very useful.

So the G Suite feature tips I will share with you today, are the following:

  • Mail “trimmed” content
  • Google “undo send”
  • Set expiration dates for access to Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides files
  • Disable downloading, printing, and copying of any Google Drive file

Mail “trimmed” content

Mail “trimmed” content, maybe better explained in this screenshot.

the_message_trimmed.png

If you see … three dots, you can click on it and see the whole email messages

The “trimmed content” is typically quoted text from a previous message (identical content), Google hides it so what’s initially visible is only the NEW content. Google’s view is that people don’t need to see the message they just sent, that the person is replying to. They just want to see the actual reply (new content).

There are times that you may want to see the full message history, and there are ways to work around to see all.

You can use a chrome app to show trimmed content: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/trimless-for-google-mail/niepjjjfafhadmfdminbckmciijcaagc

The other options are to do the following:

In your Gmail, do the following that should take away the trimming when you send an email

  1. From within Gmail, click on the gear icon and select “Settings”.
  2. In the “General” tab, scroll down to the “Signature” section.
  3. Select the radio button near the upper-left corner of the signature box (This deselects the “No Signature” option).
  4. Leave the signature box blank.
  5. Check the box that says, “Insert this signature before quoted text in replies and remove the “–” line that precedes it.”
  6. Scroll down to the bottom and select “Save Changes”.

Google “undo send”

When was the last time you sent an email that seconds later you wished you hadn’t? Maybe you forgot an attachment? Maybe you forgot to check to spell or to delete the e-trail below your message that had personal comments. Or just maybe, you were irritated, and you realized you should have slept on your response before firing it off?

Google has an “undo send” feature. To enable it:

  • Go to the little cog icon in the upper right-hand corner and select “Settings.”
  • Look a third of the way down the page for the “Undo Send” section.
  • Check “Enable Undo Send” and then choose between 5, 10, 20 and 30-second windows of undoing send. Go for the longest interval to give your mental red flags a chance to flutter.
  • Make sure you hit “Save Changes” at the bottom.

Set expiration dates for access to Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides files

Did you know that you could set expiration dates for access to your Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides? This is a very useful feature, in that will keep your organization’s information safe by setting an “expiration date” for specific user access to files in Google Drive.

If you have an outside contractor for a project lasting three months. To complete the job, the contractor needs to view a spreadsheet containing the contact information of your employees.

You can now share your employee list in Sheets with the contractor, give them view access only, and set that access to expire when their contract does (in three months).

If the contractor attempts to open the spreadsheet after the expiration date has passed, they’ll be denied access.

Please note that you’ll only be able to set expiration dates for users with a comment or view access; you will not be able to set expiration dates for file owners or users with edit access.

Disable downloading, printing, and copying of any Google Drive file

With Information Rights Management (IRM), people using Google Drive can now disable downloading, printing, and copying from the advanced sharing menu-perfect for when the file you’re sharing contains sensitive information that you don’t want to be shared broadly or leaked.

This option is available for any file stored in Google Drive, including documents, spreadsheets, and presentations created with Google Docs.

To enable this feature:

  1. Open the sharing dialogue from any Google document, spreadsheet, presentation, or other files in Drive on the web
  2. Click on Advanced in the lower right-hand corner.
  3. Check the ‘Disable options to download, print, and copy for commenters and viewers’ box and click Save changes.

This functionality is also available through an API.

Notes:

  • This feature can be enabled by file owners only, and on the web only
  • Once this feature is enabled, all entry points for downloading, printing, and copying will be removed from Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides on all platforms.
  • Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations for which this feature has been enabled will show a notification at the top of the File and Edit menus
Disabled_export.png

Conclusion

I find these features critical to how I do my work and how I share my documents with others, outside of my Google Domain, with these features I have control of what I share and for how long.

What are your views, feel free to comment below.


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